


Iron Sharpens Iron

by devilinthedetails



Series: The Ties that Bind [1]
Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Duty, Friendship, Gen, Knight and Squire - Freeform, Responsibility, Royalty, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 20:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12733725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: King Jonathan asks Lord Imrah to take Roald as his squire.





	Iron Sharpens Iron

Iron Sharpens Iron

“You’ve come to court to select a new squire, no doubt, my lord,” King Jonathan remarked to Lord Imrah as they stepped onto a balcony off the royal quarters overlooking a courtyard where laughing boys and giggling girls were running around as they sang out a nursery rhyme about a princess trapped in a tower by an evil mage who made her sleep for a hundred years until a handsome prince came riding by to rescue her with a kiss. The stanzas wafted like the scent of lilacs blooming in the bushes below up to Lord Imrah on the warm breath of the May air. Since Imrah’s childhood, the lyrics hadn’t changed. “If I recall correctly, the Pearlsmouth boy you were training got his knighthood last Midwinter.” 

“You’ve a keen memory, sire.” Imrah nodded and sipped at his glass of wine. “He did indeed.” 

“You’ll have many fine candidates to choose from.” King Jonathan leaned on the gilded balustrade. “Lord Wyldon tells me that this year contains many promising pupils. He even suggests this may be the best class he will ever train, the one that will define his tenure. Doubtlessly you’ll face a difficult decision in picking your new squire.” 

“Certainly a more difficult one than you will, Your Majesty.” Imrah smiled because it was a given that this year the king would select the Crown Prince to be his squire as custom dictated. 

“I’m not so confident of that, my lord.” King Jonathan stroked his beard. 

“Prince Roald has just become a squire this year, hasn’t he, sire?” Imrah’s forehead furrowed as he wondered if he had embarrassed himself by misremembering the heir to the throne’s birthday, but, no, Prince Roald had been born five years after Imrah’s first son Emeric (now a knight guarding the Gallan border), two years after Imrah’s second son Henri (an acolyte with the Mithran priests in the City of the Gods), and (his heart tore at the thought) the same year as his daughter Blanche who would have been Roald’s age if she hadn’t been stillborn. Imrah often recalled important events in relation to the ages of his children. They were his most reliable timeline. 

“Yes, he has,” confirmed King Jonathan, fingers beating a tattoo against the stem of his wine glass, and Imrah felt more confusion than relief. 

“Then surely Your Majesty will be taking him as your squire?” Imrah did not know why he was questioning something that should have been fact but this wouldn’t be the first or last tradition that the unconventional King Jonathan had smashed to smithereens. 

“Roald is a good boy though I suppose every father thinks that about his son,” mused King Jonathan without actually answering Imrah’s question. “His biggest problem is that he’s so devoted to doing his duty that he has become—for lack of a better word—stiff. Even Lord Wyldon thinks he’s a bit stiff.” 

“As you say, he’s a boy, sire,” Imrah responded, nonplussed as to why the king was confiding such parental concerns in him. “With time and guidance, he’ll outgrow his stiffness.” 

“Yes, with guidance he should outgrow his stiffness.” King Jonathan shot Imrah a cryptic glance loaded with a meaning Imrah would have needed a spymaster to decode. “I’m just not convinced that I’m the best man to provide that guidance to my oldest son.” 

“Who better, Your Majesty?” Imrah frowned into his drink. “Nobody would be more equipped to teach him how to handle the responsibilities of ruling than yourself.” 

“I’ve been teaching him about the responsibilities of ruling since he was weaned.” King Jonathan pinched the bridge of his nose. “There’s little more he can learn from me about the responsibilities of rule. Mithros knows, perhaps I emphasized them too much, and that’s why Roald is so stiff. It’s just hard not to emphasize the responsibilities of rule when you’re raising the realm’s future ruler as you might soon learn, my lord.” 

“I beg your pardon, sire?” Imrah cursed his ears for developing a rich imagination in the middle of a conversation with his monarch, a most inconvenient time for flights of fantasy. 

“I would ask you to consider taking Roald as your squire, Lord Imrah.” King Jonathan’s sky blue eyes pierced into Imrah’s. “You’ve raised four squires loyal to the realm and to you, so I believe you’ve the personality to soften some of Roald’s stiffness and pull him out of his turtle shell. You’re an experienced military commander who can instruct him in tactics and strategy. You’re lord of the fief with the wealthiest city in the country so he can gain valuable experience dealing with merchants and trade. It’s time Roald cultivated more of the connections and formed the power base he will need when he is king. Legann is an ideal place to start.” 

“Your Majesty, I don’t know what to say.” Imrah was too taken aback to be anything other than honest. It should have been flattering to be entrusted with the heir to the kingdom—to be able to mold the man who would one day sit the throne—but instead the notion was terrifying in its scope. Any mistake he made with Roald could be monumental. “I’m honored by your confidence but fear I am not the right man for the task.” 

“If you aren’t, then no man is.” King Jonathan somehow managed to sound charismatic and vulnerable at the same time. “Lord Imrah, the bond between knight master and squire is a sacred one precisely because both parties enter it by choice. I’ll not violate that tradition by commanding you to take my son as your squire. I only ask that you do so as a favor to your king and your future king.” 

The king might only have been asking but Imrah heard the request as a command. The Legann family along with the Naxens, the Queenscoves, and the haMinch clan had been named the shield of Tortall by Jonathan I, and, since that time, so Legann legend insisted, no Legann knight had failed to perform a service requested by his liege. Expectations of generations weighed his shoulders down as he bowed to King Jonathan and promised, “Whatever you ask of me, sire, I will perform to the best of my ability.” 

“Thank you, my lord.” The king’s serious nod was undercut by a wry grin. “You won’t regret it, I assure you. Roald has relatively little of the classic Conte stubbornness, and I think the Conte stubbornness was the real reason the custom of the Crown Prince squiring for his father developed.” 

“Some stubbornness in a squire isn’t a bad thing, Your Majesty.” Imrah chuckled, noting inwardly that he had never minded a touch of a headstrong nature in a squire and that he couldn’t expect the son of two determined monarchs to be mild-mannered as a lamb. “Like the old expression says, as iron sharpens iron, so one strong man sharpens another.”


End file.
